When race director Sean Ryan made the call to stop the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon just two hours after it started May 20, 2012, he knew he'd face a firestorm of criticism. Media outlets questioned the depth of his race preparations and the decision of his medical team, and runners took to comment boards and social media to tear his team apart.

The morning after the cancellation Ryan checked in with his media director.

In a new twist in the long-running battle between experienced marathoners and "finishers," the veteran marathoners were coming down on the half marathoners and first-timers for the increasingly cautious approach of race directors that they felt had just cost them a race.

One commenter on marathonguide.com wrote: "If anyone was responsible for the problems with this year's race, it was the inexperienced runners that didn't heed the warnings their bodies were giving." Another posted: "The fit, prepared runners that can handle the heat should not be robbed due to bad planning and a lot of out-of-shape runners that should know their limits and not start the race."

Such comments were echoed by dozens of others. Ryan sympathizes with the veterans.

"Twenty years ago the conditions we had at Cellcom wouldn't have led to a cancellation," he says.

THE NOW GENERATION

Not that long ago, as many recall, marathons were the domain of only the most serious, well-prepared runners. As the sport has grown, the makeup of the race field has changed dramatically.

Boston Marathon director Dave McGillivray says that when he began running in the 1970s, races were all about competition.

"I could go to a race, look at the field, and count off -- one, two, three, four -- OK, I'm gonna finish ninth," he says. "It was all about how fast and what place. The only people that ran were people that were competitive."

In the 1980s, he says, the walls of intimidation began to crumble, and then the philanthropy world brought more people into the sport. The bulk of registrants became "finishers."

"It's great to see people getting off the couch," Ryan says, but he admits that there are big questions looming for races. "At what point does the level of support tell the athlete that they don't need to be as well-trained or prepared?"

Matt Waterstone of South Holland, Ill., is a veteran of 15 marathons and has a PR of 3:07. The 29-year-old believes there's a generational phenomenon influencing the marathon field.

"Our parents -- and I put myself in this group -- put us in everything when we were growing up," he says. "Now we want to feed that athletic fire and we want to do it at an accelerated pace, so we'll jump from casual running right to our bucket-list race, the marathon. We think we can just go up there and do it, so runners are toeing the starting line much more under-prepared than in the past."

A comment by one of the runners in the 3:50 pace team that Waterstone led at the Chicago Marathon illustrates the point.

"This woman couldn't run a 3:50 marathon pace for 15 miles, but here she is telling me she just signed up for the Madison Ironman," Waterstone says.

McGillivray says the issue isn't going away, and organizers need to deal with it before it hurts the sport and the racing industry.

"The phenomenon is there are a lot more participants, which means there are a lot more inexperienced participants," McGillivray says. "It's a matter of understanding what it is and how we collectively can deal with it."

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The Boston Athletic Association allowed runners to defer their entry to the 2013 Boston Marathon due to the hot weather forecast for the 2012 edition of the race.

PROVE IT

McGillivray proposes a qualifying standard for marathons.

"The way it is now, anybody can sign an application, pay the fee, and they're in. But I think everybody should have to earn the right to participate, to show that you've done the work to earn the right to toe the line."

He suggests that directors require all marathon entrants to show they've run a half marathon, being generous with the time.

Ryan doesn't agree that it would work, because as soon as it became widespread practice, new races might begin marketing that they don't require a qualifying time. On the other hand, Phil Stewart, publisher of the Road Race Management newsletter and director of the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run in Washington, D.C., notes that it would actually be a reach back to previous practice.

"The first time I ran Boston in 1973 was the first year you didn't have to pass a medical exam before you ran," he says. "But there is a significant amount of self-selecting going on already, with the growth in half marathons. That may be a good thing to have the half marathon becoming a respectable badge of endurance."

Katie Schmidt coaches more than 350 runners, almost all of them novices, each year as the head running coach for the Chicago Team To End AIDS. She says she wouldn't be opposed to a qualification standard, but fears it would hurt charity participation because participants don't tend to train for two events (one of the criticisms long-term runners aim at charity runners).

At the same time, Schmidt acknowledges the growing sense of entitlement in the race community. "With all the aid stations and support, the sense of personal responsibility has gone down," she says. When something goes wrong at a race, she says, runners may be too quick to blame race officials. She ran the 2011 Rock 'n' Sole Half Marathon in Milwaukee. There, June temperatures hit 85 degrees and organizers were heavily criticized for not having enough water and aid stations on the course.

"People were going crazy," says Schmidt. "I thought, 'Hello! You signed up for a race in July that starts at 9 a.m., what did you expect?'" She requires trainees to carry hydration through all training runs, and encourages it on race day as well. "We tell them the aid stations are in case of emergency, not something to depend on." (Note: Greg McMillan also advised this for competitive runners in his November Performance Page column.)

UNWILLING TO ADJUST

That said, the slow or intro-level runners aren't the ones Schmidt sees as causing the biggest issue.

"The hardcore runners are the ones I've seen being a problem because they want to get a PR or qualify for Boston," Schmidt says. "I've seen the elite runners blow through water stations, where the inexperienced runners get hydration. Those people don't care about time, they just want to finish."

Stewart seconded Schmidt's observation. "The slow runners aren't the only ones who end up in the medical tent," he says.

Look no further than the Boston Marathon, with its stiff qualifying standards, for greater evidence.

The temperature at the 2012 race climbed to 89 degrees, prompting McGillivray to make a rare offer to participants. They could choose to defer their entry to 2013 without having to requalify for the coveted spot. He knew that a lot of runners with doubts would put themselves at risk just because they didn't want to lose their chance at Boston.

"The inexperienced runner might say, 'I don't need a time, I just want to finish,'" McGillivray says. "The elite guys believe they can handle the heat."

Of the race's 27,000 registrants, 2,200 chose to defer.

Chris Nemeth was one of those who ran, but heeded the advice of organizers. The 64-year-old Evanston, Ill., runner, a veteran of 54 marathons, went to Boston hoping to run a 3:17 marathon, but says that in those conditions, "you throw out any time goal." He slowed his pace and finished in 3:48.

"I feel grateful whenever I cross the finish line," Nemeth says. "I don't take any of this for granted."

Many others weren't as cautious. Of the field of veteran athletes who did run, 2,000 ended up in the medical tent and 200 were taken to the hospital. In comparison, at the infamous Chicago Marathon disaster of 2007, one runner died, but only 400 runners were treated and 30 sent to the hospital.

Nemeth thinks that today, a smaller portion of the field truly appreciates the challenge the marathon presents. "There's a reason races have a disclaimer on the signup forms," he says. "It really is difficult. You have to know yourself, and you have to know the conditions." Even fast, experienced runners seem unwilling to adapt their goals in order to stay out of the medical tent.

At the Dallas Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon last March, race officials implemented a multitiered heat action plan as temperatures were predicted to soar in the late stages of the race.

SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

McGillivray says that a race staff with less medical experience would have been hard-pressed to handle the situation -- even Boston was right on the edge.

As the sport grows, directors are increasingly fearful of a catastrophe that would give a black eye to all events, making it more difficult to get municipal approval for races and more costly to produce them. Some responsibility for preventing that black eye, McGillivray says, is on the shoulders of runners.

"On our side, as race directors, if you do get in trouble we need to be there to take care of you," he says. "But this is a team approach. In extreme conditions you have to take personal responsibility. You need to pull back. You have to understand you're not going to set a PR."

Madison Marathon director Keith Peterson decided this year that he couldn't leave that decision up to his runners. A week after Ryan canceled the Green Bay Marathon in midrun, Peterson took the unprecedented step of calling off the Madison Marathon on Friday of race week. In 2006 and 2010, the race had been stopped hours after it started.

"Our medical director recommended that we not start the race," Peterson says. "If we did, we were going to have to stop it again, for the third time in eight. That's not a practice I want to get into."

He felt the blowback from indignant veteran runners immediately.

"The runner might sign a waiver, but as a race director, with the knowledge I have at my disposal, that waiver's not worth the paper it's printed on," Peterson says. "Runners are unique; it's a solo sport. This isn't a criticism -- but when a director cancels a race, the runner is often thinking only of themselves and what they've done to prepare. As a race director, I have to look at the big picture. I'm not able to separate them by preparation level."

When Peterson started the 2010 race under a yellow flag, he told runners to slow their pace.

"The marathon runners listened, the half marathoners didn't," he says. "They ran their normal pace. We were having medical incidents all over the course and started seeing half marathoners in the medical tent within an hour."

After canceling the marathon in 2012, Peterson still staged the half marathon scheduled for the same day. Most of the marathon runners transferred into the half, and a few stubbornly tried to create their own marathon.

"We had marathon runners get up at 4 a.m. to run the half marathon course, come back to the start, and run it again with everyone else to get their full marathon in," he says. "Three of the six people who went to the hospital in 2012 were in that group."

'DO NOT START' RULE

Peterson has now adopted the standard suggested by Dr. William O. Roberts of the University of Minnesota. Roberts is the medical director of the Twin Cities Marathon who published a report in 2010 that recommended a Do Not Start temperature of 68 degrees for races held in northern latitudes.

That's quite a progression in caution.

"I remember Fred Lebow famously boasting that he would never cancel the New York City Marathon," Stewart recalls. "That was the mantra throughout the sport for many years."

Roberts' baseline, however, will likely drive a greater wedge into the rift between competitive runners and "finishers." His standard is based on the capabilities of amateur runners who have no buffer zone. While experienced runners can -- and should -- slow to a safer pace, those whose preparation is geared to simply get them to the finish when conditions are good could face disaster when conditions get rough.

Waterstone says he wouldn't bat an eye at a starting temperature of 68 degrees.

"When you put in 16 to 18 weeks of training, you've paid for the race, the hotel, the travel -- you're gonna race," Waterstone says. "If you can run sub-8:00 miles, you're probably prepared for conditions, and you're gonna be upset if the race is canceled."

But Waterstone too is adjusting. He is hoping to PR this spring at either the Illinois or Wisconsin marathon as he pursues his personal "holy grail" of a sub-3:00 marathon, but he doesn't plan to register until the last minute. He'll pay the extra $25 to register late just to make sure there's no risk of cancellation.

As for Peterson, the race director has taken caution a step further. The 2013 Madison Marathon has been moved from May to November. If it's too hot to run in Wisconsin in November, then we have much bigger issues than race safety to worry about.

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